Sing out, and get healthy

When school budgets are tight, arts programs are often the first to go. Educators have long promoted the academic benefits of both visual and performing arts, but when pressure mounts to streamline the curriculum, the programs get lopped. Thousands of public schools nationwide followed such budget tightening measures as a result of the persistent recession.

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Posted Jul. 14, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Posted Jul. 14, 2013 at 12:01 AM

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When school budgets are tight, arts programs are often the first to go. Educators have long promoted the academic benefits of both visual and performing arts, but when pressure mounts to streamline the curriculum, the programs get lopped. Thousands of public schools nationwide followed such budget tightening measures as a result of the persistent recession.

The nonprofit association The College Board found that arts education helps raise standardized test scores. Other research has bolstered this conclusion. Now comes the latest research showing that singing, for one, benefits singers' health as well as their education and outlook. The insight Swedish researchers have provided makes a stronger argument than ever that schools should think long and hard before cutting their music programs.

Researchers found that group singing, as in choirs and choruses, affects the heart. Group singers' hearts speed up and slow down in unison along with their muscles and brain activity. And it happens fast. Researchers found that singing also imposes a calm breathing pattern and changes the heart rate in healthful ways. Long, sung phrases appear to stimulate the vagus nerve, which slows the heart and produces relaxation.

Those are the physical effects. But the psychological effects of singing in groups include providing a sense of belonging and fending off loneliness.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says more than 95 percent of school-aged children attend schools that have cut funding since the recession. The loss goes beyond simple enrichment. Studies have found that arts-rich high schools in low-income areas produced graduates who are three times as likely to earn a B.A. degree than graduates from high schools with few or no arts courses. And a new National Endowment for the Arts study found low-income high school students with few or no arts credits were five times more likely not to graduate even from high school than low-income students who earned many arts credits.

Arts provide outlets for inspiration and self-expression. They motivate and reward students and connect them more strongly to school and education, all important factors in schools with students at risk of dropping out. In a study by the Center for Music Research at Florida State University, some at-risk students even cite their own participation in arts programs as the reason they stayed in school.

Arts champions must argue more forcefully that their programs are just as important as core subjects like math, reading and science. They already have powerful academic statistics.

Now they have the heart angle, too. Singing, it appears, is good for the health.